Talking About Time in Colloquial English

Tom opens this one with a hint rather than a greeting: “It’s time for lunch.” Katie’s answer is “Not yet.” Lunch has to be earned — no food until he has guessed every colloquial expression she describes, and they are all about time. He gets as far as “Please!” before giving in and playing along. Ten expressions later, Katie points out that they can now, quite legitimately, call it a day and go and eat.

What you’ll hear in this episode

The episode is built around two guessing rounds. Katie sets up a situation and Tom has to produce the expression: you’re waiting at a bus stop, the bus was due at two, it arrives at quarter past — “Oh it’s about time!” She asks what we call the moment the sun comes up, he offers “Dawn?”, and from there gets to the crack of dawn.

That one derails him completely. Tom notes that crack has another, much ruder meaning, decides not to explain it, and tells listeners “you can go and investigate that one yourself.” Katie’s summary of the situation: “He can’t speak because he’s laughing too much!” One of the hosts then admits he was up at six that morning, which may explain the giggling.

The second round covers the time of your life, to kill time, to save time, from time to time and once in a blue moon. Tom notices how odd one of them sounds — “It’s a bit strange isn’t it? Killing time.” — and adds, more thoughtfully, “I don’t want to kill time anymore. Time is going too quickly.” Along the way they talk about whether time flies at work, what you actually do to kill an hour at a station (phone, book, a walk round a park), and how call it a day also works for ending a relationship.

Quick facts

Episode	Colloquial 2.14 – Time
Pack	Colloquial 2
Level	2
Duration	17 minutes 41 seconds
Workbook	Included in the all-in-one pack

What you’ll learn

The useful thing about the guessing format is that you hear each expression twice over: once as a definition, once in use. Katie describes the situation in plain, slow English, so you can try to answer before Tom does — and if you don’t get it, his answer arrives seconds later.

You’ll also pick up how these phrases behave grammatically, which a word list won’t teach you. It’s about time has two jobs: complaining about lateness, and pushing for action — “It’s about time we had lunch.” Notice the past tense after it. Time flies usually travels with a partner: “Time flies when you’re having fun.” Kill time works both as a fixed phrase and split up — “I’ve got an hour to kill”. And call it a day is followed in the recording by a lovely piece of vagueness from Tom about what exactly ends: “Whatever ‘it’ is.”

After each round there’s a Meaning and Pronunciation task, where you answer a question, hear the expression and repeat it after the beep, with a full example sentence to copy — “Let’s call it a day, I’m tired out.”

Vocabulary from this episode

the crack of dawn – very early, as the sun is rising. The one that causes all the laughing.
to call it a day – to stop doing something, to decide that something is finished or you don’t want to continue.
time is money – if you waste time you lose money. Katie plays the impatient boss with it.
time flies – time passes very quickly, often followed by when you’re having fun.
it’s about time – used to show that something is later than it should be. Best with a glance at your watch.
to have the time of your life – to have a great, fantastic, brilliant time.
from time to time – not often, but sometimes.
to save time – to do something quickly so that you have more time for something else.
to kill time – to do something just because you have more time than you need, or instead of doing nothing while you wait.
once in a blue moon – very rarely.

In the workbook

The workbook for this unit contains the full transcript of both conversations, so you can read exactly how Katie sets up each clue and where Tom hesitates. It also has the complete glossary above, with a 1–3 politeness rating on every entry so you know which expressions are safe with anyone and which are best saved for close friends.

Then two practice exercises. Practice Exercise 1 asks short situation questions — what would you say if your friend was late and then arrived, what could you call 5 am, what do you do when you decide to end a relationship — and you answer with a phrase from the unit. Practice Exercise 2 is a matching task: six sentence beginnings, six endings, including “I’m going to bed, I’ve…” and “We only see him…”. Answers for both are included at the back, so you can mark your own work.

This workbook is part of the Zapp! English all-in-one pack at €39, which covers every episode across the whole series.

Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39

Do I need the workbook to follow the audio?

No. The audio works on its own, and the answers are given aloud. The workbook adds the transcript, the glossary with politeness ratings, and written practice.

Is the conversation scripted?

The conversations between Katie and Tom are unscripted — the laughter, the coughing and the interruptions are all real. The teaching sections that set up the tasks and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.

What level is this episode?

It’s Level 2, from the Colloquial 2 pack. The expressions are common and mostly polite, and the situations Katie describes are everyday ones.

Can I use all these expressions at work?

Most of them, yes — the glossary marks nine of the ten as level 1, usable in most situations. It’s about time is marked 2: keep it for people you know well, since it’s a complaint.

How do I stop forgetting them?

Katie’s own advice closes the episode: “use them more than once in a blue moon or you’ll forget them!”

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